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So This Is Life

Scenes from a Country Childhood

Anne Manne

Winner, Non-Fiction, Prime Minister's Literary Award, 2011

So This Is Life is a wonderfully evocative account of youth that will surely take its place among the classics of Australian childhood.At age seven, after her parents' marriage broke down, Anne Manne travelled with her mother and sisters from Adelaide to the Central Victorian countryside to begin a new life. So This Is Life is not a conventional memoir but a haunting and luminous account told through stories—unexpected moments of epiphany—where meaning, suddenly and sometimes shockingly, reveals itself.Possessing an astonishingly faithful and vivid memory of the pain, fear and joy of childhood; a sensibility keenly alive to the beauty of the landscape, the fellow-creatureliness of animals and the comedy, tragedy and dignity of the lives of the country folk she grew up among, So This Is Life shows a powerful moral vision being shaped, about the meaning of kindness, and the desolation of grief.It depicts worlds…

So This Is Life is a wonderfully evocative account of youth that will surely take its place among the classics of Australian childhood.At age seven, after her parents' marriage broke down, Anne Manne travelled with her mother and sisters from Adelaide to the Central Victorian countryside to begin a new life. So This Is Life is not a conventional memoir but a haunting and luminous account told through stories—unexpected moments of epiphany—where meaning, suddenly and sometimes shockingly, reveals itself.Possessing an astonishingly faithful and vivid memory of the pain, fear and joy of childhood; a sensibility keenly alive to the beauty of the landscape, the fellow-creatureliness of animals and the comedy, tragedy and dignity of the lives of the country folk she grew up among, So This Is Life shows a powerful moral vision being shaped, about the meaning of kindness, and the desolation of grief.It depicts worlds as far apart as the faded gentility of former goldfields wealth, and the patriarchal spivvery of the country racetrack. Full of inconsolable pain but also impish humour, these stories sparkle like gems.

About the author

Anne Manne is a Melbourne writer. She has been a regular columnist for The Australian and The Age. More recently her essays on contemporary culture such as child abuse, pornography, gendercide and disability have all appeared in The Monthly magazine. Her essay 'Ebony: The Girl in the Room', was included in The Best Australian Essays: A Ten-Year Collection. Her book, Motherhood: How Should We Care for Our Children, was a finalist in the Walkley Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2006. She has written a Quarterly Essay, 'Love and Money; the Family and the Free Market', and a memoir, So this is Life: Scenes from a Country Childhood.

Reviews

"When I came to the last page of Anne Manne's memoir So This is Life, I wept. By that time I was her closest friend and had cried and laughed my way through seventeen stories of her early life. Manne has the fundamental quality of a good writer-the ability to connect with the reader."

Carol Middleton — Overland

"In her recollection of childhood, Manne doesn't fall into the trap of rendering lengthy conversations she couldn't possibly have remembered. She chooses instead to reflect on episodes of what she calls "emotional memory", borrowing from Virginia Woolf's concept of "moments of being" for her aesthetic rationale."

Amanda Lohrey — The Monthly

"A beautiful memoir that is sure to have many meandering into the country this summer."

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